What would you improve with £50,000?

This year’s regional innovation fund has just opened its doors, and a prize fund of up to £50,000 is up for grabs for the most inventive NHS projects.

Held annually by NHS England, the £2.5m worth of funding will be used to support and promote innovation and the spread of best practice in the NHS.

The fund should support the development or adoption of a new idea, or be aligned to adopting current innovations already being promoted by NHS England.

Applications close at 5pm on 30^th May, and should be made through the NHS England portal (you’ll need to register first but this takes just a few minutes). All awards made through the fund will be allocated in July, and all the applications must show that any allocated funding will be spent before the end of the current financial year (31^st March, 2015).

If you have any questions, please contact the funding team at england.rif@nhs.net.

The Ts and Cs

There are a number of exclusions for the funding:

• Activities you’re not legally permitted to undertake
• Capital equipment
• Prototyping of a new product or solution (this is excluded as this constitutes pre-commercial product development)
• Pure academic research, for example to scope out a new idea or solution.
• Subsidising core activities. For example; delivery of an existing service that is the responsibility of local commissioners to fund; proposals that duplicate existing initiatives or activities; routine costs of website maintenance / telephone helplines; party political activities; fundraising activities.